At that point, it’s already a lost cause. There’s nothing the actual content or interface of the app can do to make up for the fact that it takes way too long to see anything at all. Imagine a paper newspaper that was wrapped in an envelope, and the envelope was so difficult to open that it took over a minute before you could see the front page of the issue. Who would buy that newspaper? No one, that’s who. And I suspect that’s who’s going to read The Daily, unless they fix this, and soon.

This morning I decide to try a little experiment: I opened up my iPad, clicked on the little Wired icon and purchased the magazine’s latest digital issue. After I agreed to fork over $4, it began downloading. For the next phase of the experiment, I grabbed my car keys, left my apartment and drove about 12 blocks to a local magazine store in Brooklyn, where I also purchased the latest issue of Wired magazine, this time in print.

I had like 1,000 people a day from the Philippines wanting to be my friend. I couldn’t say ‘no’ quickly enough; I love everybody in the the Philippines, but I thought it’d be strange if I had all those 13-year-old girls signed up as my friend. Facebook wasn’t working for me, and then they came up with a different format, where you can have ‘fans’ so it’s asymmetric. So that was a big help.

Thinking about, shouting at each other about, thinking some more about, shouting some more just in case one wasn’t understood during the first round of shouting, threatening in case the shouting wasn’t intimidating enough and then mostly waiting for someone else to try it first.Uitgevers leren niet uit de fouten van de muziekindustrie.